EU decision to ban oil imports from Russia returned pessimism to stock exchanges

The European Union decided to refuse Russian oil partially - according to Charles Michel, President of the European Council, the ban on the purchase will only apply to deliveries by sea from Russia, the transfer by pipeline will not be affected. Nevertheless, this pushed oil prices up and increased pessimism on U.S. and European stock exchanges, with the former plummeting at the start and the latter closing mostly in the red. In yesterday's trading the Dow Jones lost 0.67%, the S&P 500 lost 0.63% and NASDAQ lost 0.41%. The companies were supported by the consumer confidence index for May which declined not as dramatically as analysts expected but 106.4 against the forecast 103.9. In Europe DAX (Germany) and CAC 40 (France) fell by 1.29% and 1.43% respectively, only FTSE 100 (Great Britain) showed a small increase of 0.10%. After the next EU decisions the market participants are growing anxious about the prospects for the world economy, in particular, about further price increases against the background of the world central banks' policy of tightening the monetary policy.